People think that £24 out of every £100 of benefits is claimed fraudulently. (The true figure is 70p). People think that black and Asian people make up 30% of the British population. (The true figure is 11%). People think that 24% of the population of England and Wales is Muslim. (The true figure is 5%). People believe that crime is not falling. (It is falling). People think that 15% of girls under 16 get pregnant every year. (The true figure is 0.6%). People think 36% of the population is over 65. (The true figure is 16%). People think only 43% voted in the general election of 2010. (The true figure is 65%). And so on, and down.

There is more, but you can see the dark trend; we are ageing, thieving, lustful and overwhelmed by strangers; we are, in the prime minister's dull, self‑interested election soundbite, "broken Britain". It is Orwell's perpetual war again.

So, to speak in the fashionable language of apocalypse – who to blame? (I will guess, and suggest that 8% of the population say politicians; 63% say cats.)

It is tempting to blame a government that lies. All governments spin, but deceit is now the preferred mode of policy delivery for the Conservative-led coalition; the prime minister, the chancellor, and Iain Duncan Smith of the infamous Department for Work and Pensions, whose nose in now in danger of reaching his destination half an hour before his feet, are all caught out in lies too numerous to type. Sometimes I wonder what monstrous grandiosity created men who lie so easily about matters so significant. If it is conviction, why not convince with that which is convincing? But – pah! – let us turn to "churnalism", the second great pollutant of the age.

A few weeks ago I was rebuked by a colleague for criticising corruption in politics; journalism, he said, is as bad. (He is right. The statistics detailing distrust of politicians and journalists are suicidal, even as this distrust makes us no less ignorant; now that is a race to the bottom.) So, this is the point where I turn the gun on my trade.

Michael Gove, the story notes, has such a monitor too. And he has also participated in a revolt against the Speaker, John Bercow, of the most pointless and idiotic kind – by sitting in his chair and impersonating him. Now Tory MPs are "plotting to wear" BBB (Bollocked by Bercow) badges at prime minister's questions next week. See how the churnalism churns on ?

Or there is: "[Ed] Miliband, [Ed] Balls and how BOTH romanced the Beeb's brainy beauty [the economics editor Stephanie Flanders]". (This sits opposite a tiny, and infinitely more important story, about the dangers of gas fracking; the Tory tree becomes the fracked tree.) It was culled from an interview the Labour leader gave to Now magazine, in which he was persuaded to admit that his wife thinks he is "hotter" than his brother David – who knew? – and that he has, at various times in his life, bought clothes from Banana Republic.

This is in addition to the habitual "Red Ed" headlines, which are written because the leader of the Labour party is a "Red" communist, except that he is isn't, although the slur does have the benefit of rhyme. He is, polemically speaking, a straw communist. Or perhaps my favourite: "Newly arrived family of ducks that sent the money men of the Treasury into a tailspin". This is from the Daily Mail, it details the invasion of the Treasury by a family of ducks [al-Qaida ducks?], and it apparently "lifted the lid on an extraordinary Whitehall farce caused by [wait for it] Labour's private finance initiative".

This froth is a tide and it is soothing because it tricks us into mocking our politicians – and why not, if it makes us feel less powerless? (It also sells unprofitable, under-funded newspapers in a market segueing into pure entertainment, and it pushes the neoliberal agenda of the kind of men who own newspapers).

But it does bespeak powerlessness, although that powerlessness is entirely imagined. When we mock our politicians to the exclusion of examining their policies, we mock ourselves – and worse, we destroy our own society. The dystopia grows in the mind and expands outwards; bitter fiction becomes bitter truth. The rest, you know.